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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23299111">After the Storm Blows Through</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/BleedingInk/pseuds/BleedingInk'>BleedingInk</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Compliant, Crazy Castiel (Supernatural), F/M, Fluff, Season/Series 07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 12:14:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,296</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23299111</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/BleedingInk/pseuds/BleedingInk</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel goes to see Meg in the middle of a storm.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Castiel/Meg Masters</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>36</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>After the Storm Blows Through</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Happy birthday to my friend, Nathalie! Sorry for the delay and I hope you enjoy it.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There was a storm looming over.</p><p>Meg could sense it on her tingling skin; she could taste it in the air. She stood on the doorway of her cabin, watching the dark clouds piled up in the horizon, and smiled to herself. She didn’t have many reasons to smile those days, so she would take them wherever she could.</p><p>The world had been quiet. Well, not the world in general, where there always seemed to be something going on, but her world. The moment she figured the Winchesters were about to kick up the anthill (again), she’d run to one of her hideaways, lost deep in a Scottish bluebell woods. It was nice and remote, isolated and right under Crowley’s nose, so he would never be smart enough to look for her there. It was perfect.</p><p>Well, perfect for a while, at the very least. Perfect to hide until Crowley’s goons and hounds had lost her scent and perfect to stay away from the brothers and whatever mess they were making now. She could just sit there, nurse her third of fourth bottle of whiskey and just wait for all of that mess to blow over.</p><p>On the other hand, there was really not much else to do. No one to torture, no one to fight. She could drive towards the closest town and find a man that would be willing to fuck her easily enough, but a human guy would just… not be enough to scratch that itch. Neither had been demons for a while now, if she was willing to be honest with herself, and since no one but her was there, well, she found no reason not to be.</p><p>She was still thinking about the angel. She really hadn’t stopped in the year and a half since she’d felt their relationship shift. If she closed her eyes and focused, she could remember exactly the grip of his big strong hands on her body, the push of his lips against hers, the taste of his tongue on hers. How… blasphemous it had been.</p><p>It had been different with Lucifer. She’d admired him, she’d served him, she had been in awe at him. But she had never dared to ever think about him that way, simply because she knew that he would never lower himself to wanting a demon. He seemed above lust, desire, anything that wasn’t his single-minded goal of claiming Heaven for himself after he had been so unceremoniously kicked out of it.</p><p>Castile was different. He had a lot of things in common with Lucifer, yes, like their rebellious streak and how breathless he made Meg. But he also seemed… more approachable, in a way. He would smite her, of course, but it would be nothing personal and it wouldn’t be done in anger. Meg had flirted with him because she found the confusion on his face entertaining, because that was just what she did.</p><p>She hadn’t been expecting him to kiss her back with such intensity. She hadn’t been expecting to still want the angel with the intensity she did now over a year later.</p><p>And boy, what a year it had been.</p><p>She had thought that having to take care of him in the hospital after his mental breakdown would put a damp on her lust, and it had. She wasn’t interested in fucking this shadow of Castiel’s former self, in this bumbling, scared creature he had turned into.</p><p>But the strange thing was, even though she didn’t desire him in that way, she was still concerned. She wanted him to survive this oncoming battle. She wanted the Winchesters to stop asking the impossible from him. She wanted him to go back to his older self, not because that was the one that made her feel all tingly, but because she knew deep down that was who Castiel needed to be.</p><p>She told herself that it was because the old Castiel would be able to smite Crowley’s goons in a second, that he was a warrior and she needed that to be the case in order to survive Crowley’s rule. She needed the strong angel to protect herself while she schemed and betrayed the King of Hell. It was a logical, calculated thought and it had nothing to do with anything else she might want of him. Despite popular belief, she did know how to keep her focus when there was a cause she was trying to fulfill.</p><p>The wind had picked up without her realizing. The branches of the trees around her cabin were shaking and the sky was now a darker shade of grey. She breathed in the air and thought of angels. She thought about her angel. He was like this force of nature, like something that couldn’t be stopped and contained, even when he really didn’t know who he was or when he was confused and lost. Even now…</p><p>The sky flashed silver and the thunder came rolling in. Meg opened her mouth, ready to breathe in the thing air when something in the clearing in front of her called her attention.</p><p>He was standing there, his white hospital scrubs stark against the green and brown around him. His tan trench coat flapped against the wind the swept his clothes and his hair.</p><p>She stared at him, confused. The last time she’d seen him, he had been very unclear as to what his plans were. He’d refused to fight or to get involved in the Winchesters attempts to stop the Leviathan. That was fine by Meg, but it meant that if Castiel wasn’t going to risk his neck for his humans, it was very unlikely that he would for her, no matter what she had told Sam.</p><p>That was the reason she had decided to seclude herself until she could find another way or formulate another strategy to get her hands around Crowley’s neck long enough to squeeze the life out of him: because she couldn’t tell for sure where the angel was or what he was going to do next.</p><p>Droplets of rain began falling on his head, but Castiel didn’t move, almost as if he hadn’t noticed them at all. He simply kept staring in Meg’s direction, immobile, as if he himself wasn’t sure of where he was or what he was doing.</p><p>Meg finished the last of her drink before she shouted to make herself heard over the storm:</p><p>“Why are you here, Castiel?”</p><p>Castiel startled, but his eyes, that looked dark in the distance, turned towards her. His lips moved, but Meg couldn’t hear what he said.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>Instead of flying towards her, he walked. Calmly, like his ugly hospital shoes didn’t sink in the mud forming on the floor or like the drops of water didn’t drum in his hair. He climbed the steps towards the door until he was uncomfortably close to Meg, his eyes narrowing at her and the heat radiating from his body reaching her.</p><p>“You called me,” he repeated simply. “You prayed for me.”</p><p>“I did not such thing,” Meg replied, frowning.</p><p>“Prayer doesn’t necessarily have to be one,” he explained. “It can be just a thought or a sense of longing…”</p><p>Meg stepped back, raising her chin at him. Yes, she had been thinking of the angel, but she wouldn’t say she was longing for him in any capacity.</p><p>She thought about telling him to go away, but his eyes were so big and so bright. His lips were parted and the confusion was visible now more than it had been even at the hospital. He looked like a lost, wet puppy that someone had dropped on Meg’s s doorstep.</p><p>Usually, she would be more inclined to eat a puppy under those circumstances. But Castiel wasn’t… he was different. He just was.</p><p>“Well, since you’re here, you might as well get out of the rain,” she said, stepping back.</p><p>Castiel stared at her, blinking, and then looked down at his clothes, like he was just realizing they were soaking wet. He stepped until he was under the roof and Meg closed the door behind him.</p><p>“I’ll get you a towel.”</p><p>In the time it took her to go to the bathroom and come back, Castiel didn’t move at all. He just stood in the middle of the cabin, dripping as a pool formed at his feet.</p><p>“This is… a lovely place,” he said. It didn’t sound sincere or like something he would really say. It was more like a courtesy he’d picked up from humans: you were supposed to praise someone’s home when they invited you in.</p><p>In Meg’s opinion, there was nothing too “lovely” about the cabin. It was pretty bare minimum, with a table, some chairs, a kitchen and a cabinet on one side, and a pullout couch and a chimney on the other. It had belonged to a gamekeeper that had left his post in… strange circumstances.</p><p>Oh, Meg hadn’t killed him or anything. She’d just flashed her pretty black eyes and said some very eloquent things about what could happen to him if he were to remain. She could hardly be blamed for that, when she could’ve done so much worse.</p><p>Still…</p><p>“You’re making a mess,” she told him.</p><p>She grabbed him by the arm and pulled from him towards the armchair in front of the fireplace. She waved her hand and the logs caught fire. Neither of them could really get cold, not in the way humans did, but she liked it when the air was warmer. It reminded her of a home she couldn’t really go back to anymore.</p><p>As passively as when he’d been catatonic in the hospital, Castiel let her sit him down on the chair and rubbed his hair vigorously with the towel. He didn’t really react when she went around it and started pulling from his coat to try and slide off his shoulders.</p><p>“I’m not making a move on you,” she assured him. “These just need to get dry before you get my damn armchair damp.”</p><p>“Of course. I understand,” Castiel assured her. He waved his hand and the water in his clothes seemed to simply evaporate.</p><p>Meg wondered why the hell he couldn’t have done that before, but she wasn’t about to complain. She stepped back.</p><p>“So what brings you to my humble hideaway?” she asked, as she headed for the cabinets to get an extra glass of whiskey.</p><p>“You called me,” Castiel repeated, simply.</p><p>Meg huffed and put down the two glasses on the coffee table, filling them to the brim. There was a part of her that still wanted to argue the notion that she had been “longing” for the angel in any way, but she since Castiel wasn’t really answering to it, she decided to change the topic.</p><p>“Well, even so, you didn’t want have to come,” she replied, pushing one of the glasses towards him. “You could have just as easily ignored it, like you ignored the Winchesters for a while there.”</p><p>Castiel leaned over and grabbed the glass she’d offered it. He didn’t drink the whiskey. Meg wondered how much alcohol exactly would be needed to make him drunk. She knew about fifth bottles of whiskey and a couple more of vodka was enough to make her a little tipsy, but she figured an angel’s metabolism had to be way stronger than that.</p><p>“I… have questions,” Castiel said.</p><p>“Don’t we all?” Meg said, knocking back her drink. “Not really into philosophy, though. If you’re interested in discussing that, why don’t you go to your boyfriends?”</p><p>“Sam would certainly be more willing to discuss this with me,” Castiel admitted. “He has that sort of inquisitive mind. However, I can’t go to him as the question pertains him and his brother.”</p><p>“Oh, how fun,” Meg muttered, not even bothering to hide her sarcasm. “Just what I wanted to do. Sit around and talk about the Winchesters.”</p><p>“You don’t have to talk,” Castiel replied. “I would appreciate if you would just, as they say, lend an ear.”</p><p>“I mean, I guess I could go to town and cut someone’s ear for you.”</p><p>Castiel stared at her, wide-eyed and mildly horrified.</p><p>“That isn’t what I meant.”</p><p>“I…” Meg started, but then decided it wasn’t worth it. She took a sip from her glass and shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. What did you want to discuss?”</p><p>Castiel fidgeted with his drink. The rain drops drummed against the windows’ glass, and the thunder rolled ever closer. The electricity shut off, but neither of them made a movement when it happened. They stayed where they were, sitting in the small living room with the golden glow of the flames bathing them both.</p><p>“I have sworn off this conflict,” he started after a long while.</p><p>“Yes, I remember,” Meg said, nodding and taking another sip. This was going to be long. She could handle rambling Castiel and quiet Castiel, but this reflexive, slow talking Castiel, didn’t really appeal to her in any way. She might need to break out the vodka soon.</p><p>“I have done that because I believe my presence would be more of a hindrance than a help,” Castiel continued after a moment. “After everything I have caused, after all the damage I have done to them…”</p><p>His voice trailed off. Meg half-expected him to go on a rant about something completely unrelated, like it happened now whenever they tried discussing something difficult with him. She was preparing to tell him she didn’t really care about pandas’ reproductive cycles or whatever, but then, slowly, he started speaking again:</p><p>“I… I believed that was the best I could have done for them. Just… remove myself from the situation entirely. I…” He stopped and took in a deep shuddering breath. He stared at the glass in his hand, like he’d just remembered he had it and took it up to his lips.</p><p>“Woah, Clarence!” Meg exclaimed, but Castiel emptied the glass in two big gulps. His Adam’s apple moved up and down his throat in a way that was very distracting and that, in any other occasion, she would’ve found enticing.</p><p>Now, though, with the angst in the angel’s face, she realized it was once again, not the time for her to be thinking about these things.</p><p>He shuddered as if the whiskey burned down his throat and reached for the bottle to fill his glass again.</p><p>“Are you sure you’re in the best state of mind to be drinking?” Meg asked.</p><p>“This will hardly make a difference for me,” he argued. “This brand typically carries a 40% alcohol volume. It could go up to 70% if it’s been aged in a barrel. Did you know that the best kinds of barrel to age fine whiskey are made of white oak…?”</p><p>“Impressive,” Meg said, after three minutes of him rambling some more about the content and making of alcoholic beverages. “You should open a liquor store.”</p><p>“Do you really think so?” he asked, tilting his head.</p><p>“Sure thing, tough boy. We can get started right now. You can distill the drinks in the back and I’ll man the sales and the cash register.”</p><p>She was being sarcastic, but she didn’t really think Castiel was getting it, because his answer confused her.</p><p>“I would like that,” he said. “I would really… like that. Having a small, peaceful life with…”</p><p>Whatever the next word he was going to say was, it died on his lips before he could say it out loud. Meg braced herself for having to hear once more about thankful he was that she’d taken care of him at his lowest and how beautiful she was for doing so. Not because she hated hearing him say those things, but… she didn’t think she really deserve them. Castiel was thanking her from a place of honesty, and she had done what she’d done out of self-preservation. It was as if that nuance was lost on him and she didn’t want to be the one to rudely wake him up to that reality.</p><p>However, Castiel took another breath. His voice broke as he spoke again:</p><p>“However, I don’t think… I don’t… believe that’s meant for me.”</p><p>“Why do you say that?” Meg asked, intrigued despite herself. “You rebelled, remember? You’re not really <em>meant</em> to do anything anymore.”</p><p>“If I tried to be happy,” Castiel answered, slowly, like he needed to weight every word on his tongue before he let it out. “If I tried to build… something different, something for me, with someone I… I think that would be taken from me, one way or another.”</p><p>“Well, that’s bleak,” Meg said. She hurried to fill his glass again and hers, though she wasn’t sure when she’d really emptied it. “But you know, I don’t think it has to be like that, Castiel. I think if you had something and you really wanted to keep it, you could.”</p><p>“Even if it was wrong?”</p><p>“Really don’t think I’m the person to talk about right or wrong.”</p><p>Meg pointed at her face. To a human, she would look like a normal twenty-something girl, brown eyes and thick lips, rather attractive. She had chosen a runaway girl in the brink of death that time, someone no one was going to miss, because there was a very real chance that the Winchesters would come after her if they heard about another pretty, middle-class daughter with concerned parents going missing. Then, even though there was a chance for her to change her vessel, she really didn’t want to. There was something to be said for staying in the same body for a long time: you eventually learned where all the buttons were.</p><p>Castiel, however, could see exactly what hid beneath that surface: her twisted, darkened soul, the demon that animated that otherwise empty body. He knew exactly what she was.</p><p>And his face still softened as he looked at her, as if her very core wasn’t something to gawk at and be horrified with.</p><p>“You are… so amazing,” he said.</p><p>“Oh, here we go again,” Meg said, but she didn’t manage to sound as annoyed as she could have. Truth was, she wasn’t really bothered by Castiel flattering her.</p><p>What bothered her was that once he decided to be sane again… well, he wasn’t exactly going to be as eloquent.</p><p>“You went through the worst possible torture a human soul could’ve gone through. They broke you and made you anew into something dark and twisted.”</p><p>“Stop, you’re going to make me blush,” Meg replied, with a chuckle that was too awkward even for her.</p><p>“You weren’t supposed to care for anything. To love anything,” Castiel continued, ignoring her protests. “And yet, here you are. Caring. Listening to me.”</p><p>“Woah, Clarence. Nobody said anything about…” she started, but her words died in her mouth.</p><p>Castiel was standing close to her, a bit too close. He’d moved from his armchair to hers, leaning on the armrests, his face mere inches away from hers, trapping where she was sitting. His face was so close she could feel the heat of his grace thrumming right under his skin, watch his blue eyes darkening as he stared at her face with an unavoidable attention.</p><p>“Clarence?” she asked. She was intimidated, suddenly remembering that he was like a storm: just as unstoppable and just as wild. When he let himself be that way.</p><p>Hell, she wanted him to be that way around her. The Winchesters would never know, they would grasp exactly the magnitude of what he was. She could. It was only fair…</p><p>“You…” he mumbled, putting his hand on her cheek. Meg shuddered as another lightning flashed through the window. “You have no idea what it could be like. For you, for us.”</p><p>A roaring thunder made the cabin shake. The windows vibrate and the drinks on the coffee table clattered, the glasses moving dangerously close to the edge. Meg wasn’t sure if it had been the storm that’d done that or if it was Castiel’s power that made the air around them come suddenly alive. She didn’t dare to move, except to part her lips, slow and inviting.</p><p>Maybe she had been wrong. Maybe there was something of the old Castiel still left in there, somewhere: the warrior, the angel. Maybe this whole rambling was a charade or, more than that, a refuge. Castiel was letting his mind wander through winding paths to protect himself, to avoid in a way what he had done.</p><p>What he knew he had to do right now.</p><p>“I fear…” he started. He closed his eyes, sighed deeply and then open it again. “I fear there’s no end to this. I have information that might be helpful to the brothers in their fight, but I’m afraid to go to them. I’m afraid to misstep again, and even if we win, then what?”</p><p>“Then you find something else to do,” Meg said. “Some other cause to serve.”</p><p>She didn’t want to keep talking about hypotheticals. She considered how easy it would be to grabbed him by the lapels and pull him down, to clash her mouth against his.</p><p>And if the way his gaze had darkened was anything to go by, then maybe he was thinking it too.</p><p>He stayed right where he was, though, uncomfortably close but still not close enough. He seemed almost pensive now, but his eyes were still moving from Meg’s eyes, to her lips, and then back up to her eyes.</p><p>“I’m tired of the fight,” he commented. “I’m tired of… everything. I want peace. I want a place to rest my head. Aren’t you tired? Of all your plans, of all the schemes…”</p><p>Meg ha to make an effort to gather her thoughts, to figure out how to answer something like that with as much delicacy as she was capable to.</p><p>“It doesn’t matter if I’m tired or not,” she told him in the end, in what had to be the most honest moment of her second life. Because Castiel would understand, because he wouldn’t judge her at all. “Crowley is going to keep coming for me, no matter what I do. So even if I am tired… there’s no peace for me until he’s dead. The same way there’ll be no peace for you if you let your humans fail.”</p><p>Castiel breathed in sharply, like Meg’s words had somehow hurt him physically. His lips quivered and for a second, it looked like he was trying and failing to smile. Then he breathed in deeply, shuddering, and finally leaned over.</p><p>He didn’t kiss her, though. He just buried his face on the crook of her neck. Meg closed her eyes, taking in his warmth, the scrap of his five o’clock shadow against her skin. She trembled, as the storm beat hard against the small cabin, strong and angry like it was trying to blow it down. Slowly, like she was trying not to scare away a small, nervous animal, she raised her hand and grabbed unto the sleeve of his trench coat.</p><p>Castiel didn’t move, but after a long while, he finally spoke.</p><p>“You’re right. I can’t simply forsake them. At the very least, I need to inform them of what I know.”</p><p>“That’s not what I said, but I’m glad it help you make up your mind,” Meg replied, not even trying to hide the sarcasm in her tone. “I don’t understand you, Castiel. You know they’re going to drag you back into that entire mess the moment you show up.”</p><p>“They can’t if I don’t let them,” Castiel said. To Meg that sounded extremely naïve, but then he moved again. There was no escaping his eyes. “You’ve done so much for me already, but can I ask you another thing?”</p><p>Meg thought about making a quip, about telling him that he was an idiot for trusting that a demon would keep her word. But she didn’t.</p><p>“If… if I can,” she said, instead.</p><p>“When this is over… all of it. The Leviathans, Crowley, anything else that is thrown our way, can we meet again?” Castiel asked.</p><p>“Meet?” Meg repeated.</p><p>“Here… or somewhere else where we can sit and listen to the rain,” Castiel explained.</p><p>“Why do you want that, Clarence?”</p><p>Castiel thought about this question for a long time. His eyes became glossy and Meg was sure that this time she’d lost him, that he was going to start rambling and ranting again about the most innocuous, irrelevant things.</p><p>He surprised her once again with the truth.</p><p>“I think… it would be peaceful,” he said.</p><p>There a lot of other things it could be on top of that, but Meg knew what he meant.</p><p>“Sure,” she said. “There are worse ways to pass the time.”</p><p>This time he did smile. He did more than just smile. He turned his head and placed her lips on her cheek, and then on her forehead.</p><p>It didn’t have the same despair as the last time he’d kissed her, but it was equally strong. Equally passionate and it made Meg’s borrow heart beat faster all the same.</p><p>“Should… should we go now?” she asked in a whisper, because if she had to wait until the battle was over to have her angel to herself, then perhaps the best she could do was throw herself in the battle and get it done already.</p><p>Castiel had other plans.</p><p>Slowly, he knelt in front of her, his hand moving down from her cheek to her shoulder, his fingers ghosting the length of his arm. He sank his face on her lap and breathed in deeply, as he squeezed Meg’s hand in his.</p><p>“We can wait,” he murmured. “After the storm blows through.”</p><p> </p>
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